Tag: special effects

Den of Geek has a pretty nifty list of their choice of top 50 movie special effects shots. I don’t agree at all with the ordering of the list, and they missed quite a few classic shots, but all in all they did a good job of summarizing. It’s interesting to read a little snip of what it took to make the shot too.

29: 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) – Entering the airlock without a space-helmet.

The pioneering rotoscoping and miniature work of Douglas Trumbull, Wally Veevers and Les Bowie often overshadows one of the most effective zero-gravity shots ever filmed – and, unlike on Apollo 13, the film-makers had no need to hire NASA’s ‘vomit comet’ to obtain it. In the movie Dave Bowman – Keir Dullea – is forced to re-enter a spaceship without a space-helmet, and does so by depressurising his lungs and blowing the explosive bolts of his EVA vehicle, which is pressed hard to the airlock. The shot was accomplished by positioning the camera directly beneath the pod and airlock set and ejecting a roped Dullea from the prop pod with an accompanying puff of propane. The angle hides the support wires, and the lack of any sound (until the cabin repressurises) is what really sells the shot. Arguably the ejection of the oxygen in one blast might have moved the pod away, but that’s perhaps an unreasonable quibble. There are too many other SFX shot contenders from 2001 to even begin to list them here.